The process of creating partially hydrogenated oil was created by Wilhelm Normann, a chemist in a German laboratory, in 1901. The food uses seemed pretty simple at the time: solid fats like margarine and shortening make shelf stability easy, and naturally solid saturated fats like lard and butter were expensive. Why not take cheaper, liquid fats and turn them solid?
Medical Research on the Dangers of Partially Hydrogenated Oil
It was only many years later that research made the health effects apparent. Researchers observed that partially hydrogenated oils had bad effects on cholesterol balance: the Mayo Clinic gives an overview about trans fats and cholesterol levels. The overuse of these ingredients can lead to arterial plaques, which are linked to heart disease, diabetes, strokes and other severe illnesses.
Increase in inflammatory responses has also been observed; this is linked to heart disease as well, and to a number of other problems.
Obesity has been linked to trans fat in research, even when the control group is eating a similar amount of calories from unsaturated fat. Other links that have been suggested by research include liver disease, cancer, and even infertility. Trans fat is serious business!
What Causes Trans Fats' Health Effects?
These effects are due to the shape of trans fat molecules, which "stack" more stably with each other than unsaturated fats: an effect responsible for their desirable cooking properties, like being solid at room temperature. Unfortunately, elaidic acid - a trans fatty acid which is solid at room temperature - is also solid at body temperature.
Safe Eating Information
While it is worth noting that overly large quantities of saturated fat can cause many of these problems, there is an opinion among doctors that trans fat causes worse problems with cholesterol levels than saturated fat does: according to the American Heart Association, it is acceptable to eat up to seven percent of caloric intake as saturated fat, but the maximum safe quantity of trans fatty acids is set at under one percent. In fact, the National Academy of Sciences goes even further, and says there is no safe quantity.
Some natural animal fats contain small amounts of trans fat, but the trans fats that occur in nature seem to have less ill health effects than partially hydrogenated oils made in a laboratory. Another interesting fact about trans fats is that they are found primarily in partially hydrogenated oils, but not in fully hydrogenated oils: fully hydrogenated oil is simply saturated, and should be treated as such for dietary purposes.
More Information about Trans Fats
Trans fat is found in many foods. In order to stay safe from these dangerous ingredients, learn about hidden sources of trans fat and how to avoid them, or find out how to make a low-fat vegetarian burrito that's delicious and trans fat free.
 |
